Safety hat



July 21, 1959 A. J. RUGGIERO SAFETY HAT Filed June 23, 1955 m ATTORNEY M rt,

United States SAFETY HAT Alfred J. Ruggiero, San Francisco, Calif, assignor to E. D. Bollard Company, San Francisco, Calif, a corporation of California Application June 23, 1955, Serial No. 517,539

Claims. (Cl. 23)

My invention relates to safety hats; and the principal object of the invention is to provide a hat body with a suspension harness coacting under a blow on the hat body so that the force of the blow is resiliently absorbed and distributed and the damaging effect of a sudden impact avoided.

Another object is the avoidance of cumbersome and metallic fittings between the harness and the hat body so that blows having a large laterally directed component cannot cause head wounds by penetration of such fittings, and are absorbed and distributed by broad surfaces of the harness and adjacent areas of the hat crown.

Another object is the provision of an interlocking device between hat body and harness characterized by easy engaging and disengaging, but under the impact of a blow on the hat body becomes progressively tighter up to the maximum of the force applied, thus acting as a progressively applied brake in absorbing the kinetic energy of the blow.

Still another object is the provision of a safety hat of excellent dielectric properties and in which no metal is included.

Other objects will be brought out in the following description of the invention. I do not limit myself to the showing made by said description and the drawings, since I may use variant forms of the invention within the scope of the appended claims.

Referring to the drawings:

Fig. 1 is a side elevation of my safety hat, portions being broken away to disclose underlying parts.

Fig. 2 is a portion of my hat in horizontal section, the plane of section being indicated by the line 2' -2 of Fig. 1.

Fig. 3 is a fragment in elevation, showing the lower end of a supporting tape secured by a wedge and the mounting strip of the sweat band. The direction of the view is horizontally toward the center of the suspension harness.

Fig. 4 is a perspective view of the sizing fastener which secures the ends of the sweat band together.

The embodiment of my invention herein described is achieved by a molded plastic hat body having predetermined qualities of tensile, impact and shear strength, elasticity and flexibility, in combination with a suspension harness including supporting straps and a sweat band. Flat interlocking wedge and socket parts are arranged between the sweat band and the lower portion of the hat crown. The socket part is disposed on the crown and is molded integrally therewith, having flat inner surfaces extending only slightly within the sweep of the inner surface of the crown at its juncture with the brim.

The sweat band which lies just within the crown preferably comprises two thicknesses of material, the inner one in direct engagement with the head of the wearer, and the outer one constituting a mounting band to which the ends of the supporting head straps are made fast. Secured in the end of each supporting or head strap is a flat two-way or dovetail wedge block seated in its complementary companion socket. The wedge block is readily engaged in and disengaged from its socket, but even the light weight of the hat body seats and locks the parts securely together. Any pressure or blow on the hat, results in two distinct movements of the wedge block in its complementary socket, both tending to tighten the connection and impose a progressively severe braking action on, or resistance to the force or energy of the pressure or blow which must be absorbed or dissipated.

A blow of given intensity taken directly on the head may inflict a serious or mortal injury. The same blow received on my hat while in place on the head may do little more than jar the wearer, because movement of the hat relative to the head is met by a rapidly increasing resistance offered by the engagement of a plurality of twoway wedges in complementary sockets spaced around the crown of the hat, and the resilient resistance offered by the crown to flexure or buckling between the sockets.

My harness of course provides the resilient or elastic flexing and cushioning inherently present in fabric and leather tapes and sweatbands, but these are not enough to absorb the major force of a blow which may crush through the hat body and expend its final energy in a mortal injury. Nor are heavy pads or cushions between sweatband and crown effective in preventing the transmission of shock from hat to head. Analysis of injuries received by the wearers of cushioned hats showed to everyones surprise, that with the displacement and deformation of the cushioning means, there was an immediate rebound in the opposite direction with aggravation, not lessening, of the injury.

My invention provides means for interposing automatically applied braking resistance with substantially no rebound, between the hat body and the head, so that a major part of the energy of the blow is dissipated in overcoming this frictional resistance of engaging two-way wedge parts; and the impact of the remaining energy distributed around and over the entire upper area of the head above the sweatband with relative slowness compared to the sharp and sudden impact of a direct blow.

My safety hat comprises a hat body of which the main portion is the crown 2. Preferably the hat is molded of one of the nylons which has the desired qualities of resilience and flexure, and integrally formed with the crown wall along its lower margin, are a plurality of pairs of fiat lugs 3 extending into the cavity of the crown a small amount, which only about doubles the thickness of the Wall at that point. The reason for the low, flat quality of the lugs is to preserve a substantially even sweep around the inner surface of the crown, so that in the event accidental means drives the hat laterally against the head of the wearer, there are no projections to add penetration wounds to the blow.

The lugs 3 are disposed at the inside lower edge of the crown and extend upwardly in it, with their adjacent edges 4 undercut and diverging downwardly to provide a shallow dovetail socket 6 in which a wedge block 7 of complementary shape interlocks.

The wedge block is also molded of nylon and has an integral cross bar 8 at its upper or smaller end, which lies within the bifurcated loop 9, formed at the lower end of the head strap 12.

Preferably the head straps have loops 9 at each end, their control portions being gathered together in the tie cord 13 to adjust the position of the hat vertically on the head.

Each loop 9 of the head strap also encloses a relatively narrow section or strip 14, separated from the mounting band 15 along its upper margin by the longitudinal slits 16. The mounting band is the outer layer of the two-layer sweat band, the inner layer 17 of which directly engages the head of the wearer.

At each end of the mounting band means are provided for adjusting the size of the sweat band so that the hat may be comfortably fitted to heads of different size.

Extending across the middle portion of each end of the mounting strip are a series of spaced parallel slits 21, so that the ends may be brought into register for different head sizes. When so registered the slits are threaded through with the elongated stud 22 formed on the tab 23 and having a head 24, pointed at each end to facilitate its penetration through the slit layers of strip. The head is then interlocked with the tab 26 on the opposite side of the sweat band, and in which there is an elongated eye 27. The relatively stifif and thick stud and eye tabs are connected by the thin and flexible tie 28, all being molded from nylon in a single piece. When in position to hold the sweat band at the desired size the tie 28 extends around the edges of the sweat band as shown in Fig. 1.

It is noted that if the hat is subjected to a blow while being worn, there is a two-way movement of the wedge block in its socket. One movement tends to bury the block deeper in the socket, and the other tends to push the block further toward the small end of the socket, so that the greater the blow, the tighter the securement between the wedge block and the crown.

While the extent of such relative movement between the parts is small, it is of extreme importance because the resistance is applied with a force which rises rapidly to maximum and with no tendency whatever to bounce back suddenly, thus having the effect of a friction brake applied with rapidly increasing pressure. The flexed and deformed nylon in the engaging parts as well as in the adjacent material will of course recover shape after being stressed, but such recovery is not instantaneous, and it does not cause or contribute to a reactive bounce.

I claim:

1. A safety hat comprising a stiff crown, a plurality of sockets formed by pairs of lugs integrally molded with the crown around the lower part thereof, the lugs of each pair along their adjacent edges being interiorly beving free end portions, a head strap in the crown having at each end a bifurcated loop detachably engaging said free end portions of an associated wedge block, and a sweat band to which each head strap is directly connected.

2. A safety hat in accordance with claim 1, in which said sweat band has longitudinally extending slits to free integral portions thereof each to be slidably enclosed by a bifurcated head strap loop.

3. A safety hat in accordance with claim 1 in which the sweat band comprises an inner head band and an outer mounting band having longitudinally extending slits therein through which the head strap is looped and having a plurality of transversely extending circumferentially spaced slits adjacent its ends, and a unitary flexible strip having an eye in one end and at the other end a relatively stiff integral stud interlockable with the transverse slits and the eye to fix the head size of the sweat band.

4. A safety hat comprising a stiff crown having a substantially uniform thickness throughout, a plurality of pairs of inwardly projecting lugs integrally molded within the crown at circumferentially spaced intervals around the lower part thereof, each said pair of lugs with an inner surface portion of the crown defining a downwardly opening socket having vertically and transversely divergent sides, a dovetail wedge block having lateral edges complementary to the divergent sides of the socket and detachably engaging the crown, a head strap in the crown having each end detachably connecting the upper edge portion of a wedge block, and a sweat band within the crown to which each end of each head strap is directly connected.

5. The combination according to claim 4, in which said divergent sides of the socket lie wholly within said inner surface of the crown, said wedge block detachably engages the crown only within said socket, and said head straps detachably connect only the upper edge portion of the wedge blocks.

References Cited in the file of this patent UNITED STATES PATENTS 451,954 Rodier May 12, 1891 1,391,620 Faulk Sept. 20, 1921 2,286,843 Catalane et a1 June 16, 1942 2,398,561 Ruggiero Apr. 16, 1946 2,536,467 Ruggiero Jan. 2, 1951 2,585,937 Johnson et a1. Feb. 19, 1952 2,742,646 Berg Apr. 24, 1956 

